It’s a great way to tackle the overwhelming project of completely organizing your home in a reasonable and realistic period of time!

In our house we have three bathrooms, but one is in the basement and is rarely used (only by overnight guests). Upstairs the boys use the small “main” bathroom of the house and we have a good-sized ensuite. As far as organizing, all of the towels are kept in our linen closet (which I’ll be organizing next week), so it really was just the drawers, under the sink, and medicine chest that I had to tackle in the bathrooms.

It started out kind of a mess… but I’d love to show you the before and afters together {isn’t that so much more satisfying??}. So I’ll start by talking about the process.

The steps I followed to reign this area in were:

Step One: Let it All Hang Out & Purge

Look at what you have. Take everything OUT of the drawers and cupboards and cabinets. Go through it all and purge whatever you don’t need / don’t use/ or is out of date.

Step Two: Sort

Once it is all purged, start by sorting it into groups of like items. In the bathroom, I grouped together: nail-care, hair-care products, hair appliances, make-up, tooth-care, eye/contact lense care, first-aid, medications, sunscreen, cleaning products, etc.

Step 3: Assess Your Needs and Determine Position

Figure out what organizers will work best. I purchased all of my drawer dividers at my local dollarama and sorted “like items” into bins accordingly. I also thought about which drawer things should go based on frequency of use. Because why bend over to the bottom drawer twice a day to grab your toothbrush?

Step 4: Clean and Prep

Clean the cabinets and drawers to prep for the newly organized baskets. I also added some pretty contact paper to clean things up. Although we’ve added new door fronts to our bathroom cabinets; the cabinets themselves are older, so I like the clean fresh feel of the pretty contact paper that I added.

Step 5: Go to TOWN!

Organize the heck out of those spaces. And if you find you need a little more organizing space then you have in your bathroom, then you definitely will want to check out my post about super creative DIY bathroom organizing ideas & hacks!

Now! Onto the fun part!

Organizing Before and Afters!

Under our ensuite sink…

One side houses all the cleaning supplies. The other side has two baskets: one with hair-care products and skin cream. The other (back) basket has all of our sunscreen collection.

The top drawer… the nail polishes were all moved to a new location, and the tooth-care supplies were given a more priority location.

Middle drawer… contact solution, face-care, etc.

And the bottom drawer (I had some bins but they were totally unsorted and messy). Body wash, first aid, etc.

A favourite part of this organizing venture?? That time I used mini organizers within my bigger plastic bin to make our first aid stuff more organized…

My makeup drawer with plastic organizers…

Hair appliances…

Most of my taller hair-care products and styling products ended up under the sink, and I made room for a nail-care drawer instead.

The medicine cabinet…

We store a few basics on our countertop as well…

I have always loved the crisp, fresh feel of our ensuite decor; and now it feels just as clean and fresh behind closed doors and drawers! Yay!

They are 6 and 9 and not into many bathroom products. But under the sink was untidy and a bit of a mess. I used plastic dollar store bins to keep things corralled in a way that makes sense. Cleaning supplies; extra bathroom supplies. Look how pretty the contact paper is!

and instead of having one really messy drawer with all their stuff, I purged the junk we don’t use and they each got their own “side” of the vanity. One drawer per boy. It’s really all they need…

I love their bathroom still…

Woot woot! Another space tackled and it feels great! I hope you are making good progress on this challenge as well. It’s worth living through the weeks of chaos to reach that finish line {I think!}.

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Comments

Thank you for all the ideas. And links as well. I do have a question. I see under your kids sink, you pushed the garbage can to the back area of the cupboard. That will make it hard to use it regularly wouldn’t it?!? There are items in the way that they would have to move each time to access it. Was this over looked or is there a treasure m behind it?!

Hi Alana,
Glad you found some ideas! The boys rarely used their garbage can, so I did tuck it behind the other bin. We can easily switch that around if we find that we need to access it more easily. I also wanted readers to see the kinds of items that I grouped together in the bins so they would see more clearly how I organized this simple space:)

I know Stephanie, we are lucky to have such a big vanity! I thought some of the hacks and storage ideas I shared in my Bathroom Organization and Storage Roundup were brilliant, though. You might want to check that out for some creative bathroom organization DIYs!!